The Sunday News
RENEWED calls by several senior Government officials for the country to expedite the land audit programme are quite commendable and informed.
The audit is not only going to expose multiple farm ownership as at most it will be expected to flush out unproductive farmers whose land has long been lying idle as well as ascertain the exact number of farmers who benefited from the land reform programme.
Farm boundaries and ownership disputes that have dogged the resettlement process are among some of the things the land audit will seek to rectify. The audit will not only be good for the country’s thousands of other landless people who are still crammed in unproductive land. It will be good for the economy too that is reeling under the curse of imports.
The calls were made recently by Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa who is championing the food security and nutrition cluster whose thrust is to create a self-sufficient and food surplus economy and see Zimbabwe re-emerge as the “Bread Basket of Southern Africa” under the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim Asset).
The cluster programmes are aligned and informed by the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), Draft Comprehensive Agriculture Policy Framework (2012-2032), the Food and Nutrition Security Policy, the Zimbabwe Agriculture Investment Plan (2013-17), Sadc and Comesa Food and Nutrition Frameworks.
It is against this background that the Vice-President issued a clear and bold statement when he visited Arda Nandi Estate in Chiredzi that those people who were holding on to land for speculative purposes and those who owned more than one farm should cede some of the land to Government for redistribution. His sentiments were apt.
He did not end there. He warned that people who benefited from the Government’s land reform programme but were not productive were going to be moved to places devoid of agricultural productivity where they could “go and rest”.
“The first thing which is required is land and it is available. The second thing is water and the brains, which are also abundantly available. What we need to do as Government is to put in place all the other requirements such as irrigation equipment to ensure that the country re-emerges as the food basket of Southern Africa. We are willing to engage serious farmers but we will move those people who have land and are close to water bodies but are unproductive. We will move them to areas where they can go and rest,” Cde Mnangagwa said.
It is our view that such warnings are not just issued without cause and effect but should be taken seriously and Government should make follow-ups on them to ensure seriousness from the beneficiaries of the Land Reform Programme.
While we hold no beef with those that benefited, we insist they should not see their benefiting as a privilege but a responsibility to produce for the country and for those that did not benefit from the land reform exercise.
Reports that there are cases where some farms in the country are registered in the names of minors are worrying and stink of the highest levels of corruption.
It is our submission that such mal-practices and anomalies that seek to taint the historic milestone that the country undertook should be investigated, exposed and perpetrators prosecuted.
Getting large tracts of land for free from the Government and sitting on that land is not only morally wrong but is an act of sabotage that should not be tolerated.
In our opinion, it is therefore not far from being correct to brand those that are doing so as enemies of the State — for they are not only selfish and unpatriotic but feeding from the same troughs and belong to the same ideological school as those that were deposed from the land.
Fact is, when the Government embarked on the well meant Land Reform Programme it was motivated by the need to distribute the country’s most important resource to the landless citizens who were living like mice in unproductive land while large tracts of the country’s prime land was in the hands of a handful white farmers.
History will tell us that the black majority were forced into the tsetse fly infested reserves where stones grew better than plants and where rainfall rarely visited, no wonder the land question is among the main causes of the protracted war of liberation.
Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement Minister Dr Douglas Mombeshora echoed Vice-President Mnangagwa’s sentiments and reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to normalise the situation in the land reform exercise through the audit saying the “use it or lose it” policy was not just a political hoax.
It is encouraging that reality is slowly but surely sinking that for the economy to register significant progress it has to reduce its import bill where such things as maize, potatoes, bananas, apples, oranges and many other agricultural produce that used to be abundantly available in the country are now among the list of imports.
